Tonbridge's New Angel Centre Gets the Go-Ahead: Councillors Vote Unanimously to Build

The new Angel Centre is going ahead. Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council's Full Council voted unanimously on Tuesday 20 October to commit to building the £20.6 million replacement leisure centre on Sovereign Way Mid Car Park - the decision we flagged as make-or-break when archaeological survey work began on site earlier this month, and when the council published how it planned to pay for the scheme without borrowing.

Planning permission for the new centre was already granted back in July, and the building's final design and main contractor, Etec, were already settled. Tuesday's vote was narrower but more consequential: whether to enter a Development Management Agreement with the council's development partner, Alliance Leisure, to actually progress the project through to construction, completion and handover. With that agreed, construction is expected to start in January 2027, with the new centre scheduled to open in 2028.

As the council's own report set out ahead of the vote, the £20.6 million is coming entirely from reserves and existing budgets, plus a £1 million contribution from tmactive, the leisure operator that runs the current Angel Centre and will continue to run the new one - meaning the council expects to be debt-free once the project completes. Council leader Matt Boughton called it the biggest single investment TMBC has ever made. Importantly for existing users, the council says the current Angel Centre will stay open throughout construction, with no interruption to its programme of activities.

The unanimous vote masked a real debate about community access. Representatives of the University of the Third Age (U3A) told councillors that "bookable is not the same as protected for community use," warning that Tonbridge - unlike surrounding villages with their own village halls - relies heavily on the Angel Centre for affordable meeting space, and that community bookings risked being squeezed out by commercial leisure activity. The U3A asked for five specific safeguards: publication of the management agreement between the council and tmactive, a guaranteed minimum allocation of daytime community bookings, clarity on affordable hire rates, an ongoing voice for community groups in future decisions, and a clear route to raise concerns if access fell short.

Officers responded that the management agreement - discussed in a closed session of the same meeting, since it touches the Trust's commercial finances - had been strengthened to state that existing community rights "will not be diminished," though the full agreement itself wasn't published. Cllr Adem Mehmet, cabinet member for Infrastructure and Tonbridge Regeneration, said community use had "remained integral to the design throughout," pointing to a retractable wall between meeting rooms, extra storage and hearing loops added in response to public feedback, and said oversight would continue through the council's Communities and Environment Scrutiny Select Committee. Other councillors were more cautious: Cllr Bridge called protecting community access one of his key conditions for backing the project and said the management agreement was now the main safeguard the council had left to rely on, while Cllr Hoskins said reassurance for community groups would only really come once the centre opened and they could see the arrangements working in practice.

Alongside the gym, café and soft play facilities already announced, the approved plans include three multi-purpose studios able to hold events of up to 332 people, step-free access throughout, an active wellbeing suite with inclusive equipment, and a low-carbon, energy-efficient design. Source: Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council, Full Council agenda, 20 October 2026, and council leader Matt Boughton's Facebook statement of 21 October 2026